Face Your Fears: 7 Steps to Conquering Phobias and Anxiety - Softcover

Jones, Christopher Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1789295327 ISBN 13: 9781789295320

Publisher: Michael O'Mara, 2024

Synopsis

Overcome your fears, phobias and anxieties with this simple, innovative and effective 7-step method.

If you’ve struggled to deal with an overwhelming fear, phobia or anxiety – one that may have prevented you from living your life to the full and taken a toll on your mental health – then this is the book for you.

Written by Christopher Paul Jones, a leading specialist on phobias, Face Your Fears: 7 Steps to Conquering Phobias & Anxiety is a practical guide to taking control of your mental wellbeing and treating common phobias, including fears of flying, spiders, public speaking and heights, as well as claustrophobia, agoraphobia and anxiety.

Christopher’s innovative Integrated Change System, the culmination of more than 20 years of research, offers a series of easy-to-follow, guided exercises that will allow you to uncover the source of your fears and work towards overcoming them. With this proven approach backed by a mix of cutting-edge methods, removing a phobia can be quicker and easier than you think.

About this title

About the Author

Christopher Paul Jones is one of the world's leading phobia specialists and features regularly on international TV, radio and in the press, including the BBC, Channel 4, Canada’s CBC, Hello, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire, and national newspapers. His 7 Step Integrated Change System combines the most cutting-edge techniques in the field, and his clients come from all over the world and include Hollywood actors, Oscar nominees, presenters and other celebrities. Christopher’s qualifications include Clinical Hypnotherapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, EMDR, Contemporary Psychotherapy, NLP Trainer, Timeline Therapy, EFT and Rapid Induction Therapy. He is based in London.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

FEAR OF HEIGHTS

Acrophobia – a profound, irrational fear of heights – has existed as long as humans have.
  In theory, fear of heights makes sense. After all, falling from a great height can injure or even kill us. However, most of us aren’t regularly exposed to heights in a dangerous context – strict health and safety laws protect us. It’s unlikely that the elevator you’re in will plummet to the ground, and the skyscraper you’re at the top of is unlikely to crumble. Still, I deal with people paralyzed with fear even at the mere mention of heights.
  Imagine that you’re standing at the edge of a tall building. Some of us might experience a feeling of apprehension or dread, and others may feel a thrill at being so close to danger. But this situation is a nightmare if you’re living with acrophobia.
  Most of us will naturally have some trepidation around heights (you wouldn’t catch me climbing a building without proper safety gear!). With acrophobia, though, even the thought of being in a high place provokes intense anxiety, physical sensations such as a racing heart and dizziness, and frustration and helplessness, especially when the person feels they are in mortal danger but knows the fear is irrational.
  One of the most unlikely people I thought would ever walk through my door was a professional stuntman called Max. He was well known for his fearless appearances on-screen but carried a secret; he had harboured a deeply entrenched fear of heights for his entire career.
  This phobia, as ironic as it seemed considering his profession, had serious implications for his career. His fear was specific to freestanding heights like cliff edges or building tops, an aspect of acrophobia known as ‘visual height intolerance’. His phobia meant he had to reject certain roles, limiting his opportunities in the industry.
  Max had never experienced a fall or accident from a significant height, and it had nothing to do with the possibility of harm – he was pretty happy to drive a motorbike at 100mph while on fire.
  We traced the origin of the fear back to his childhood. His construction worker father often narrated his work experiences, embellishing the dangers of working at great heights. Over time, these narratives unconsciously shaped Max’s fear, creating a phobia that was completely opposed to his fearless image.
  After we worked together, he could perform breathtaking highaltitude stunts without any fear (although I’ve changed his name here, there’s a good chance you’ve seen him in a film recently!).
  This fear can affect people from all walks of life – singer Jessie J famously had to overcome her fears to perform on a raised stage, and Spider-Man actor Tobey Maguire ironically struggled with heights while filming his stunts for the movie series. He said that despite his character’s love of swinging between rooftops, ‘standing on the edge of a building, looking over the edge – it’s so horrible. I hate it.’
  Matt Damon, known for his roles in action-heavy flicks such as the Bourne series, found he had a dormant fear of heights when filming at the top of a tall building in Dubai, recounting, ‘We get up to the top and we go out on the pad and start walking towards the edge, and my legs were completely frozen. I couldn’t physically move; it was crazy.’ And this was despite all the safety procedures in place. This particular example illustrates the conflicting feelings that phobias bring up in us – our conscious mind knows we are perfectly safe, but our unconscious is still ringing alarm bells.
  If you suffer from acrophobia, it can dictate where you choose to live and how you spend your leisure time, or hold you back from taking jobs you’ve worked hard for, which was the reality for Sarah.
  Sarah was a seasoned businesswoman who had always been gripped by a paralyzing fear of heights. She was a high achiever in most aspects of her life – she had a degree from a prestigious university, a great career and was, for all intents and purposes, very successful. Still, something was standing in her way – a fear of heights. She was constantly headhunted and received multiple job offers, but there was always one problem: they were always in high-rise buildings.
  Realizing this was holding her back immensely, Sarah decided to come and see me. After working together, situations she once dreaded were faced with calmness and even pleasure. The crippling anxiety and worry that once dictated her actions were no more. She could fulfil her dreams and take on the positions she had worked so hard to get. Our phobias affect us in myriad ways, and letting go of them unlocks so much more than peace of mind. By dealing with the phobia, Sarah also achieved her career goals, hit her earning targets and felt more satisfied with life overall. It was never about trying harder; it was just about moving on.

Myths and facts about acrophobia
Myth 1: Acrophobia is rare
Fact: Acrophobia is actually one of the most common phobias. According to Huppert et al., around 33 per cent of the general population experience some form of height intolerance or acrophobia. A poll by YouGov found that 58 per cent of adults report some degree of fear of heights.

Myth 2: If you have acrophobia, you can’t go upstairs or climb a ladder
Fact: A study in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders showed that people with acrophobia could do relatively risk-free tasks like climbing stairs or ladders without major issues. However, some people may struggle with extreme heights or situations where falling would have severe consequences.

Myth 3: Acrophobia is just a fear of falling
Fact:While it’s clear that fear of falling is a large part of acrophobia, it’s not that open-and-shut. In fact, the fear of falling has its own name (basophobia), and this fear revolves around the sensation of falling rather than the height.
  Sometimes, acrophobia is accompanied by the fear of losing control or the fear of the vastness of open spaces, and the risk to physical health is often overshadowed by the psychological impact of feeling overwhelmed and helpless.

Myth 4: You’re born with acrophobia
Fact: While some people may show signs of a fear of heights from birth, it can develop at any stage in our lives. I often work with people who have experienced some form of trauma related to height, and this doesn’t just mean a fall. It could be having a panic attack, feeling trapped or even someone playing an ill-advised prank. It’s also worth noting that having pre-existing phobias can lead to an increased risk of acrophobia.

Myth 5: People with acrophobia are more likely to be fearful in other areas of their lives
Fact: To the contrary, acrophobia is a specific phobia, a mental and physical reaction to certain stimuli. Just because you’re scared of heights doesn’t mean you are scared in general – many people I treat have plenty of adventurous hobbies.

Myth 6: If you have acrophobia, you can’t have anything to do with heights
Fact: In reality, acrophobia doesn’t have to hold you back from achieving your goals. One of my favourite examples is Gustave Eiffel, the designer of the Eiffel Tower, who was famously scared of heights. However, this didn’t stop him from creating one of the tallest (at the time) and most iconic constructions ever achieved.

Myth 7: Vertigo and acrophobia are one and the same
Fact: It’s easy to get these two mixed up, but they’re different entities. Vertigo is a physical sensation, often spurred by innerear or brain complications, that triggers feelings of imbalance and spinning. While heights can trigger it, that doesn’t make it synonymous with a fear of heights.

Myth 8: Any fear of heights is an instant acrophobia diagnosis
Fact: Here’s the thing – a pinch of fear when peering over the edge of a skyscraper is our natural survival instinct at work. Acrophobia is an entirely different ball game. It’s an intense, irrational fear that inserts itself into daily life without any reason or logic. That said, it shares similarities with other fears, so it’s always worth delving deeper into the root cause.
  One client I had recently who was not a typical client (although there is no such thing as a typical phobia client) was Joe. Joe didn’t have a background of experiencing particular phobias or even fear around heights, but he came to me convinced that he did.
  He thought this fear must have laid dormant until he went on holiday and was encouraged to experience a ‘terror bridge’ – a bridge over a vast gap with only clear plexiglass on the floor, providing a perfect view of what you’d be falling onto should the structure fail. Now, being scared of a terror bridge seems normal, but with Joe it left a lasting impression.
  He saw elderly families and young children all cross the bridge without any problems, but when it came to his turn he was left shaking on the side, unable even to put his feet on it. Convinced that this was a huge fear of heights, he came to see me. We discovered that the underlying cause was a fear of being judged – Joe couldn’t allow himself to be nervous in public. He thought that everyone would be laughing at him, so he bottled the emotions up until they overwhelmed him. His perceived acrophobia was actually social anxiety.

What are the dangers and causes of a fear of heights?
Like all phobias, a fear of heights is often rooted in culture and biology. Let’s look at this in more detail.

         Heights from a historical perspective
You don’t need to be an expert on psychology to deduce that being wary of heights might have started as a safety mechanism against falling from high places. Imagine being an early human foraging for food up a tree – one slip could be fatal. Some healthy fear triggered by this situation would ensure that you would take as much care as possible; however, this instinctual fear response, honed over millennia, has carried into the modern day, manifesting in some of us as acrophobia.
  Vivid descriptions of the fear of heights can be found in ancient texts from the Greek, Roman and Chinese classics; acrophobia is derived from the Greek words akron, meaning peak or summit, and phobia, signifying fear.
  Even now, tales give currency to heights as something to be scared of. We’ve all heard the dangers of flying too close to the sun, which refers to the Greek myth of Icarus plunging from the sky as the man-made wax wings he used to escape prison melted.
  Our fear responses are not purely instinctual, though. Our everyday experiences can significantly influence our reaction to heights or open spaces. For instance, in societies where tall structures like urban cityscapes are a common part of everyday life, the fear of heights might be less prevalent than in cultures where people live closer to the ground.

           Triggers
If we want to understand the nature of acrophobia, we need to recognize what triggers it, what could potentially cause it and the signs that indicate its presence.
  Sometimes we are at increased risk of developing acrophobia, if it’s linked to a traumatic event in our past, such as falling or watching someone else fall from a height, having a negative experience like a panic attack, or a medical emergency. New research has suggested that the root cause of fear of heights could lie within our genes. DNA testing company 23andMe found that there are a total of 392 genetic markers associated with fear of heights.
  It’s been found that people with a fear of heights will see a surface as nearly twice its real height as opposed to someone without the fear – this is known as evolved navigation theory

QUICK RECAP:
    Many people struggle with acrophobia, and it is far beyond just the fear of falling. This discomfort is not limited to physical heights but extends to even the thought of being in high places, resulting in palpable fear.
    Fear of heights can have a multitude of different causes, ranging from past trauma to genetic predisposition.
    It’s highly unlikely that heights will cause us harm unless we work in certain niche industries.

Edition details

• Publisher: Michael O'Mara
• Publication date: 2024
• ISBN 10: 1789295327
• ISBN 13: 9781789295320
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 288